White House aiming for Trump pivot from coronavirus to economy – The Globe and Mail

U.S. President Donald Trump stands as Vice President Mike Pence speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington on April 20, 2020. The White House is planning to shift President Donald Trump’s public focus to the burgeoning efforts aimed at easing the economic devastation caused by the pandemic.

The Associated Press

After two months of frantic response to the coronavirus, the White House is planning to shift U.S. President Donald Trump’s public focus to the burgeoning efforts aimed at easing the economic devastation caused by the pandemic.

Days after he publicly mused that scientists should explore the injection of toxic disinfectants as a potential virus cure, Mr. Trump has now rejected the utility of his daily task force briefings, where he has time and again clashed with scientific experts. Mr. Trump’s aides are aiming to move the President onto more familiar – and safer, they hope – ground: talking up the economy, in tighter controlled settings.

It’s a political imperative as allies have seen an erosion in support for the President. What had been his greatest asset in the re-election campaign, his ability to blanket news headlines with freewheeling performances, has become a daily liability. At the same time, new Republican Party polling shows Mr. Trump’s path to a second term depends on the public’s perception of how quickly the economic rebounds from the state-by-state shutdowns meant to slow the spread of the virus.

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Some states have started to ease shutdown orders, and Mr. Trump is expected to begin to highlight his administration’s work in helping businesses and employees. Aides said the President would hold more frequent round-tables with CEOs, business owners and beneficiaries of the trillions of dollars in federal aid already approved by Congress, and begin to outline what he hopes to see in a future recovery package.

Mr. Trump last left the White House grounds a month ago, and plans are being drawn up for a limited schedule of travel within the next few weeks, an aide said. It would be a symbolic show that the country is beginning to reopen.

The shift comes in conjunction with what the White House sees as encouraging signs across the country, with the pace of new infections stabilizing and deaths declining.

Still, medical experts warn that the virus will remain until at least a vaccine is developed and that the risk of a severe second wave is high if social distancing is relaxed too quickly or if testing and contact tracing schemes aren’t developed before people return to normal behaviours.

The White House is deliberating whether to continue to hold news briefings in a modified form without Mr. Trump, potentially at a different location. Before Mr. Trump said in a tweet Saturday that they were “Not worth the time & effort,” aides had been eager to use the briefings to highlight positive trends and to overwhelm Americans with statistics. It was an effort to restore confidence in the response so that the public would be comfortable resuming more normal activities.

“We know that’s important,” Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force co-ordinator, told Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “We understand those messages of science and policy need to be brought forward to the American people in a non-political way.”

Few Americans regularly look to or trust Mr. Trump as a source of information on the pandemic, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released last week.

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On Monday, the White House is expected to release a recap of what the federal government has done so far to improve the availability of COVID-19 testing, personal protective equipment and ventilators.

Still, governors in both parties say much more is needed, particularly in testing, in the coming months, as they deliberate how and when to reopen their states.

“I want to get our economy back opened just as soon as we can, but I want to do so in a safe way so we don’t have a spike, we don’t cause more deaths, or an overloading of our health care system,” Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican from Mayland, told ABC’s This Week.

Dr. Birx expressed frustration that Mr. Trump’s injection comments were still in the headlines, illustrating the tensions that have emerged between the President and his medical advisers.

“As a scientist and a public health official and a researcher, sometimes I worry that we don’t get the information to the American people that they need, when we continue to bring up something that was from Thursday night,” she said on CNN’s State of the Union.

As the White House aims to turn a corner, it is also beginning to assess responsibility for critical missteps. Two senior administration officials said Mr. Trump has begun discussions about replacing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who led the coronavirus task force during its initial weeks and has been blamed for a culture of bureaucratic infighting during that period. Mr. Azar has been largely sidelined since Vice-President Mike Pence took charge of the task force in late February.

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Charts Showing Good and Bad News for Nigeria's Economy Last Week – BNN

(Bloomberg) — Africa’s largest economy had a week of good and bad news as the oil price rebounded to the highest level in two months, while the negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic on consumers and business activity became clearer.

Crude prices have doubled since hitting a two-decade low in April, climbing past $40 a barrel after OPEC+ cuts started taking excess supplies from the market. With oil bringing in 90% of foreign exchange revenue for the continent’s largest producer, this will boost government income and dollar liquidity. Ironically, Nigeria is among the countries accused by the production group of not fully complying with the reductions that helped push up prices in the last month.

The following four charts show some of the bad and the good for Nigeria.

If oil prices stabilize close to the current levels until the end of the year, it would add modest upside risks to forecasts for economic growth, public finances and international reserves, said Mahmoud Harb, a director at Fitch Ratings. A 10% rise in the full year’s average crude price above the company’s current forecast of $35 per barrel would improve Nigeria’s current-account deficit by about 1.5% of gross domestic product, he said.

Yields on Nigerian bonds maturing in 2047 fell from an all-time high of 13.2% on March 19 to 8.6% on Friday, a sign that investor concern has eased. Although the West African nation has ruled out going to international bond markets this year, the cost of raising new debt will be relatively lower now if it chooses to.

Although the purchasing managers index of Stanbic IBTC Bank and IHS Markit’ rose last month, it remained below 50, suggesting the economy of Africa’s largest crude producer will shrink in the second quarter. The central bank said last week Nigeria may avert a recession and that the drop in GDP could be less than the 3.4% projected by the International Monetary Fund, but its own manufacturing PMI fell to 42.4 in May after staying above 50 for 36 consecutive months. The manufacturing PMI compiled by Lagos-based FBNQuest Capital fell to 43.3 in May from 45.8, with all sub-indices in contracting territory.

“The recession this year will be smaller than in advanced and many peer economies because of the limits to Nigeria’s integration within the global economy,” analysts at investment banking firm, FBNQuest wrote in a note on Friday. “For the same reason its U-shaped recovery in 2021 is likely to disappoint. Household demand remains squeezed.”

Nigeran consumers are feeling the impact of the disruption in economic activities, data released Friday by the statistics agency shows. At least 79% of respondents in a survey said their incomes have decreased since mid-March, when restrictions were imposed to curb the spread the pandemic. More than 42% who were working before the pandemic now say they no longer do and 51% of households were forced to buy less food due to higher costs.

Mr Malpass told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend: “It [coronavirus] has been a devastating blow for the economy.

“The combination of the pandemic itself, and the shutdowns, has meant billions of people whose livelihoods have been disrupted. That’s concerning.

“Both the direct consequences, meaning lost income, but also then the health consequences, the social consequences, are really harsh.”

Mr Malpass warned it’s been those who can least afford it who’ve suffered the most.

“We can see that with the stock market in the US being relatively high, and yet people in the poor countries being not only unemployed, but unable to get any work even in the informal sector. And that’s going to have consequences for a decade.”

The World Bank, along with its counterparts, has been providing support to the worst affected countries, but says much more is needed.

It is calling on commercial lenders such as banks and pension funds to offer debt relief to poor countries.

He would also like them to make the terms of their loans clearer, so other investors are more confident about putting money into those economies.

Targeted government support and measures to shore up the private sector are also vital to rebuild economies, the World Bank argues.

Investment and support would create jobs in areas like manufacturing, to replace those in the worst affected sectors, such as tourism, which may have been permanently lost.

‘Tensions and inequality’

Mr Malpass admits the damage to global trade, and inclinations to bring supply chains closer to home or erect trade barriers, are a challenge.

“When trade is reduced, that creates its own set of tensions and inequality… I’m sure [the global economy] will be interconnected in the future, maybe less than it was pre-COVID.”

But ultimately, Mr Malpass said the “catastrophe” could be overcome, and that people were “flexible, they’re resilient” .

“I think it’s possible to find paths, it’s hard work for countries and governments to do that.

“But we can encourage that effort… I’m an optimist, over the long run, that human nature is strong, and innovation is real. The world is moving fast and connectivity… has never been higher. And so that gives hope for the future.”

However, he admits the challenge is getting the right plans in place at the right time – and in the meantime, the pain could be considerable.

Guardians of the World Economy Stagger From Rescue to Recovery – Yahoo Canada Finance

(Bloomberg) — The world’s governments and central banks are shifting from rescue to recovery mode as the deepest slump since the Great Depression shows signs of bottoming out.

After rolling out trillions of dollars worth of measures to prevent their economies and markets from collapsing, they are now doubling down with even more spending to backstop a recovery as coronavirus lockdowns ease. In what counts for good news these days, Bloomberg Economics’ global GDP growth tracker showed economies contracted at an annualized rate of 2.3% in May, less than the 4.8% slump in April.

“Policy makers are moving from triage to recovery,” said Deutsche Bank Securities Chief Economist Torsten Slok. “They are realizing that more fiscal support will be needed to households and small businesses to prevent this liquidity crisis from turning into a solvency crisis.”

The new wave of stimulus has both governments and central banks moving in sync to continue flooding lenders, markets and companies with cheap credit at an unprecedented pace.

The European Central Bank last week expanded its asset purchases by 600 billion euros ($677 billion) to 1.35 trillion euros, and extended them until at least the end of June 2021. And Germany’s government agreed another 130 billion-euro fiscal stimulus push and said it will back a proposed new 750 billion-euro European Union recovery fund.

“Action had to be taken,” ECB President Christine Lagarde said in a press conference.

It’s a similar story in Asia.

Japan is planning another $1.1 trillion worth of spending in its biggest splurge yet and the central bank in May called an emergency meeting to roll out 30 trillion yen ($274 billion) of loan support for small businesses.

China last week unveiled another 3.6 trillion yuan ($508 billion) in spending and South Korea’s 76 trillion won ($63 billion) ‘New Deal’ fiscal package is its largest to date.

In the U.S., lawmakers continue to debate extra fiscal stimulus and the Federal Reserve, which meets on June 10, has just launched a new Main Street Lending Program, the latest in trillions of support it has already poured into the economy and markets.

While the Fed is unlikely to signal any moves when its officials gather this week, many economists expect it to harden its commitment to easy monetary policy later in the year and perhaps even start pursing a Japan-style campaign to control long-term borrowing rates.

The latest U.S. jobs numbers give some hope that the stimulus unleashed so far is beginning to kick in. A record 2.5 million workers were added by employers during May while unemployment declined to 13.3%, wrong footing economists who had forecast widespread job losses.

To be sure, there’s far from consensus that the latest wave of support will be enough to get growth back to where it was at the start of the year. Some of the steps being taken are merely to replace existing policies as they start to expire.

There are other concerns that monetary policy can only do so much to revive growth before it loses its potency.

“How does the Fed actually get money to millions and millions of households and small businesses, that is difficult to do operationally,” former New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley told Bloomberg Television.

“It’s much easier to intervene in the capital markets where the Fed can rely on counterparties, primary dealers and others,” Dudley said. “It is much more difficult to lend one by one to millions of different entities.”

Another risk is a return to austerity, even if it seems unlikely now. JPMorgan recently predicted a fiscal thrust of 3.3% of GDP this year and 1.5% drag next year.

U.S. senators have put the brakes on a $3 trillion fiscal package that was approved by lower house lawmakers. China’s government has ruled out a return to the kind of large scale stimulus it rolled out after the global financial crisis, preferring to keep a lid on rising debt.

Still, because the crisis meant economies were forced into shutdown, much of the emergency response so far has been less about driving growth and more about avoiding total collapse. It’s that dynamic which is leaving governments with little option but to borrow harder.

“We shouldn’t look at the positive immediate growth impact of the opening up process as being the rate of growth that may last,” said David Mann, chief economist for Standard Chartered Plc.

Creating jobs will be mission critical to cementing any upswing. That will need support for firms to retrain employees, incentives to hire older workers and for governments to continue with wage subsidies. More than one in six people have stopped working since the onset of the crisis, according to the International Labour Organization, which in April estimated more than 1 billion workers were at high risk of a pay cut or losing their job.

“A faster job market recovery will speed up the economic healing and reduce the risk from widening income inequality and social stress,” said Chua Hak Bin, senior economist at Maybank Kim Eng Research Pte.

Ultimately, the rescue of economies will go well beyond quantitative solutions and into the realm of story telling too, as policy makers will need to inject confidence back into wary consumers and executives, said Stephen Jen, who runs hedge fund and advisory firm Eurizon SLJ Capital in London.

“Human psychology is the same and is now as important as the mechanics of delivering the fiscal stimuli themselves,” he said.

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